University of California and Eolas said its patents are being used unlicensed.

Eolas Technologies Inc. acted on behalf of the University of California Regents today to sue Facebook, Wal-Mart, and Disney over four patents related to hypermedia display. The University of California has licensed the four patents to Eolas, who is litigating on behalf of the UC Regents. The company gained notoriety several years ago when it sued Microsoft in a lengthy courtroom battle which ended with a settlement in 2007. Eolas was initially founded to litigate on behalf of the UC system's patents, and has earned critics for its aggressive litigation.

The patents, according to the complaint filed against Facebook in the Eastern District of Texas today, include patent No. 5,838,906 which covers a "distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document," and patents No. 7,599,985; No. 8,082,293; and No. 8,086,662; all of which pertain to a "distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document."

Reuters reported that, "a University of California spokesman said it considered the patents public assets and 'should be paid a fair value when a third party exploits that university asset for profit.'" Meanwhile, Eolas' complaint did not enumerate which parts of Facebook's website and holdings were in violation specifically, but wrote that, "the acts and practices of Facebook in infringing and/or inducing the infringement of one or more claims of each of the patents-in-suit, Plaintiffs have been, are being, and, unless such acts and practices are enjoined by the Court, will continue to suffer injury to their business and property rights."

Facebook told Reuters that it did not believe it had infringed and would fight the suit. Wal-Mart said it would look into the matter and Disney did not respond to a request for comment.

"distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document," and patents No. 7,599,985; No. 8,082,293; and No. 8,086,662; all of which pertain to a "distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document."

Alright, can someone tell me what that means, preferably using terms that even a hyper-partisian, who thinks that the patent system work, would understand?

"distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document," and patents No. 7,599,985; No. 8,082,293; and No. 8,086,662; all of which pertain to a "distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document."

Alright, can someone tell me what that means, preferably using terms that even a hyper-partisian, who thinks that the patent system work, would understand?

ok, I tried to work through it and heres what I got. First, hypermedia is any interactive and nonlinear media, in other words most of the internet.

So the it seems to cover any time a interactive form of media uses a distributed technique (distributed is very vague, could mean gets help from a bunch of servers or offloads the task to you or someone else). For opening an application or part of application on your computer (your web browser displaying something) and embeding things from itself or elsewhere that you can interact with (youtube videos or games)

So pretty much the patent depending on interpretation and the rest of the patent can cover everything that embeds things like videos or games on the internet. In other words its a troll patent that used extra big words to try to be valid.

"distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document," and patents No. 7,599,985; No. 8,082,293; and No. 8,086,662; all of which pertain to a "distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document."

Alright, can someone tell me what that means, preferably using terms that even a hyper-partisian, who thinks that the patent system work, would understand?

Agreed. My eyes glazed over trying to read that. Patents thrown out for sounding like executive buzzwords. Bonus: Did any of the "patents" include the word "synergy"?

Okay, I read the abstracts for all of the patents in question. The intent was to post a summary in the hopes I could clarify what is quoted in the article but taken collectively they appear to cover everything you do on the internet ever.

"distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document," and patents No. 7,599,985; No. 8,082,293; and No. 8,086,662; all of which pertain to a "distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document."

Alright, can someone tell me what that means, preferably using terms that even a hyper-partisian, who thinks that the patent system work, would understand?

I havn't read the patent, so this just an out of context guess but here goes.

Hypermedia - I like TheZomb's definition. Distributed hypermedia - a hypermedia system where the different parts of it are stored on different computers, aka the Internet.External application. One that is not responsible for retrieving, storing or displaying the hypermedia documents.

So this sounds like a patent for browser plugins. Click on a link within a webpage to launch a program for displaying the linked document/video clip/music/whatever.

Normally I would say to check the patent claims, rather than jump to conclusions based purely on the title of the patent. In this case the claims aren't a lot better. Incidentally, Espacenet (European Patent Office's free online patent searching tool) appears to use this marvellous patented technology itself for displaying pdf documents of published patents. Eolas vs European Patent Office - yeah I'd get some popcorn in for that one!

Geeklaw - speaking as a fellow hyperpartisan, I would say that US 5,838,906 looks like junk. I havn't bothered looking up the other ones.

I have nothing to add to this discussion, there's nothing to add to this discussion that would justify these actions.

The crazy assholes from California, rely on the crazy assholes from Texas.

Otherwise, all these two states have in common is illegals.

So why throw your slightly racist $.02 in at all?

I think you're far too quick to throw in the racist card. If there are people in those states illegally, then all they are doing is stating a fact. If stating facts now makes you racist then you simply debase the word and the true meaning of "racism".

Let's say the author is white. Or indeed black. And lets say that I, being British, were to come over, and stay without authorisation. This would also make me an illegal.

Are you really claiming that unless the author is the same colour as me, then he is racist for saying I'm illegal citizen.

Please don't debase words like that. It really does the cause no good.

"distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document," and patents No. 7,599,985; No. 8,082,293; and No. 8,086,662; all of which pertain to a "distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking an external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document."

Alright, can someone tell me what that means, preferably using terms that even a hyper-partisian, who thinks that the patent system work, would understand?

The only bit I'll bite at is the "external application" one, which is apparently key to their claims. I imagine (no, really, I'm making this up) that would involve operations like launching the desktop version of Spotify, a stand-alone music player, a stand-alone video player or, your know, a PDF reader. Anything outside the browser, or visible within a browser window but under the control of an external application.

Thanks to everyone who offered explanations as to what these patents claim to cover. I award the prize for Best Response from a Poster who wants the internet to be a Better Place to Cogmatix for his response:

Cogmatix wrote:

Okay, I read the abstracts for all of the patents in question. The intent was to post a summary in the hopes I could clarify what is quoted in the article but taken collectively they appear to cover everything you do on the internet ever.

On your second, unless you're a native American Indian, I hope you include your self and your family in the "illegals" category.

Seriously? You mean the native Americans Indians who migrated here from somewhere else or the ones who migrated here before the modern tribes? Most human origins theory seems to hold that mankind originated in other parts of the world and migrated all over the world...including north and south Americas. So please just drop that crap in the future. You know what the poster means in regard to the 20-30 million illegal aliens who have invaded the US (since laws were put in place by the nasty "euro-trash who "stole" the country from the natives).

Sorry...been going on for thousands of years...and there weren't laws in place back then about who was "legal" and who wasn't "legal". you don't have to like them, but there are laws in place now which define who is; and who isn't. Get over it.

I was always under the assumption that a case had to be brought to the district the plaintiffs are actually, you know in. Apparently I was wrong about this. At the very least the University Of Freaking California ought to bring the case in the courts in California. If you wanted to be really really whiny you could say that they were being anti-Californian since they could be supporting their local economy by bringing the case in California court.

well now i know why they use this district. it's a poor district when compared to other areas of the state with big metro areas. beaumont is probably the largest city in the district, and it's only big because it has a port. so it seems it's just a simple case of greed. big corporate lawyers see a bunch of podunk towns that will gladly take what they offer and render the judgement said lawyers want.

it probably doesn't hurt that this district is right along the majority of the texas/louisiana border... and LA has NEVER been known for its honest civil servants (this includes a lot more than just politicians!) - so it's only natural to get a little bleed-over.

Filing date: Oct 17, 1994, so this is the date to beat for prior art purposes.

Here is claim 1:1. A method for running an application program in a computer network environment, comprising:

providing at least one client workstation and one network server coupled to said network environment, wherein said network environment is a distributed hypermedia environment;

executing, at said client workstation, a browser application, that parses a first distributed hypermedia document to identify text formats included in said distributed hypermedia document and for responding to predetermined text formats to initiate processing specified by said text formats; utilizing said browser to display, on said client workstation, at least a portion of a first hypermedia document received over said network from said server, wherein the portion of said first hypermedia document is displayed within a first browser-controlled window on said client workstation, wherein said first distributed hypermedia document includes an embed text format, located at a first location in said first distributed hypermedia document, that specifies the location of at least a portion of an object external to the first distributed hypermedia document, wherein said object has type information associated with it utilized by said browser to identify and locate an executable application external to the first distributed hypermedia document, and wherein said embed text format is parsed by said browser to automatically invoke said executable application to execute on said client workstation in order to display said object and enable interactive processing of said object within a display area created at said first location within the portion of said first distributed hypermedia document being displayed in said first browser-controlled window.

This seems to broadly address embedding an "executable application" in a webpage that enables "interactive processing" on the webpage.

I think you're far too quick to throw in the racist card. If there are people in those states illegally, then all they are doing is stating a fact. If stating facts now makes you racist then you simply debase the word and the true meaning of "racism".

Exactly. Though I don't think illegal British are NORMALLY considered an issue but really the term "illegal immigrant" is a defined term and when people who fall into that are there... well it's not really racist. Even if most of them are from the same race and maybe he didn't even like them. It's still just a fact though and in this case more likely that the "illegals" they share come from similar if not the exact same country.

In any case I had to read that patent name over several times to understand it, or at least I think I would have to because so far I just find it confusing and does indeed look like the University of California claims to have invented the internet or something. I understand the need to get as technical as possible to eliminate gray areas. Though if I have no clue where to start then it may as well be 100% gray.

Filing date: Oct 17, 1994, so this is the date to beat for prior art purposes.

Here is claim 1:1. A method for running an application program in a computer network environment, comprising:

providing at least one client workstation and one network server coupled to said network environment, wherein said network environment is a distributed hypermedia environment;

executing, at said client workstation, a browser application, that parses a first distributed hypermedia document to identify text formats included in said distributed hypermedia document and for responding to predetermined text formats to initiate processing specified by said text formats; utilizing said browser to display, on said client workstation, at least a portion of a first hypermedia document received over said network from said server, wherein the portion of said first hypermedia document is displayed within a first browser-controlled window on said client workstation, wherein said first distributed hypermedia document includes an embed text format, located at a first location in said first distributed hypermedia document, that specifies the location of at least a portion of an object external to the first distributed hypermedia document, wherein said object has type information associated with it utilized by said browser to identify and locate an executable application external to the first distributed hypermedia document, and wherein said embed text format is parsed by said browser to automatically invoke said executable application to execute on said client workstation in order to display said object and enable interactive processing of said object within a display area created at said first location within the portion of said first distributed hypermedia document being displayed in said first browser-controlled window.

This seems to broadly address embedding an "executable application" in a webpage that enables "interactive processing" on the webpage.

Pretty much this, the State cuts funding to the UC, and it digs deep into its drawer looking for anything it can to sue with. Looks like they found a nice broad meaningless bunch of paper thin patents but knowing East Texas I doubt these will be throw out immediately as they should be.